Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday August 29, 2009 @05:31PM
from the what-you're-used-to dept.

N!NJA writes "In an amicus curiae brief filed on Aug. 24, Dell asked the judge overseeing the Eastern District Court of Texas to reconsider its order blocking sales of Word, part of the original ruling in favor of Canadian software developer i4i. In the worst case, the brief argued, the injunction should be delayed by 120 days. 'The District Court's injunction of Microsoft Word will have an impact far beyond Microsoft,' Dell and HP wrote. 'Microsoft Word is ubiquitous among word processing software and is included on [redacted] computers sold by Dell.' 'If Microsoft is required to ship a revised version of Word in Dell's computers, a change would need to be made to Dell's images,' Dell wrote. 'Making such a change would require extensive time- and resource- consuming testing.' An addendum to the brief notes that it was authored in Microsoft Word, part of Office 2003."

I am a small business owner that provides integrated computers systems and support to other small businesses. As part of the package I provide M!cr0s0ft Offices, supplied to me, with authenticity seals by M!cr0s0ft of China.

Recently I was informed that Microsoft, USA, wants to put a restraining order on this perfectly legal software claiming that it is byte for byte copy of their suite of office products. While I disagree with this, for instance MS Office clearly uses ribbons, while M!cr0s0ft Offices uses menus, I realize that this is a decision for the courts.

All I ask is that the restraining order be revoked. The only way I can provide value to my customers is that M!cr0s0ft provides a hard disk which I use to image all my other computers. I pay a license fee for each image, but otherwise the labor is very cheap. If I had to install each piece of software, or even create a new image, this would destroy my competitive advantage I have over the other bigger firms.

Please, do not place an injunction against M!cr0s0ft. If the courts do find the software infringes on Microsoft product, then Microsoft can sueM!cr0s0ft and recover damages, and I will have time to find another supplier. If M!cr0s0ft is found not to be infringing, then you will be destroying a legitimate small business for no reason. I know the knee jerk reaction in this case is to assume culpability, but I assure you there are many differences between the two products, and M!cr0s0ft is not infringing. Trust me. I am the entrepreneurial backbone of this country.